The learners are currently exploring body percussion routines with various levels of difficulty. There has been impressive progress with their sense of rhythm and coordination skills.
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Through the Communication unit, Year 8 learners are developing their volleyball knowledge and skills. They are building on the solid foundation made last year and quickly making improvements in their serving, setting, digging and spiking. I am hugely impressed with their rapid progress and they are taking more responsibility for communicating their position on the court and setting up a successful series of attacking play. Their knowledge of the rules has been cemented and they are beginning to think of tactics as well as the basic skills. They are also taking more responsibility in a refereeing and scoring.
Year 8 had a fabulous day of Lego challenges for their Entry Point. They started the day with a trip to Think Big, where the wonderful staff set each team a challenge: construct a chair, a table or a tower, from a large box of bricks.
When we returned, the group was set a number of construction challenges, each with a twist. One partner was blindfolded and had to be directed to make the structure. In another task, the partner had to describe how to build the structure, but was back to back with the other person so couldn’t see what they were building. There was also a memory challenge where the teams had to replicate a long pattern of different coloured bricks accurately. At the end, the group were able to reflect on how they had used different strategies and had to think carefully about how they communicated their instructions accurately and clearly, in order to be successful. They were able to conclude that the new unit for Y8 is Communication! Ten of our Middle Years learners took part in the NISC Model United Nations Conference 2017. The conference is modelled on the workings of the United Nations, and our learners were given the challenge of acting as delegates for different nations. They participated in the challenging tasks of lobbying, debating and writing resolutions, and they tried to negotiate their way towards outcomes that their countries would be positive about. We are very proud of our learners for taking part, and for all of their hard work before, and during, the conference.
In Year 8 this week we have been learning about how metals react to acid and water. Learners began by reflecting on their previous research of acid rain caused by pollution and whether it could affect all metals. They then worked on their investigative skills and carried out an experiment to react metals with a strong acid. Learners made detailed observations of the reactions and wrote reports of their findings, reflecting on the validity of their predictions.
During this unit on COMPETITION the learners have been focusing on what the industrial revolution was and how, by trying beat each other in business, the British invented world changing inventions. They also investigated some of the negative impacts of this competition, in particular the use of child workers in factories and mills in Britain. The learners have developed a greater understanding of the life of children in the Industrial Revolution by writing their own historically accurate story of the life of a child during the Industrial Revolution.
On Wednesday, we had our Middle Years Celebration of Learning. Families and learning facilitators joined us to watch wonderful presentations and performances which demonstrated learning that has been done in music, drama, science and PE. Thank you to those of you who joined us, and well done to all of our hardworking learners!
Year 8 have been reading and exploring the text of Macbeth. They have read Act 1 Scene 7, and discussed the fierce competitiveness that Lady Macbeth exhibits. They analysed the language that she used to persuade Macbeth to kill King Duncan.
When reading Act 2 Scene 2, the Year 8 learners created drama performances showing what happened offstage. See the photos below. Year 8 learners have been exploring the idea of Competition by trading with each other to get enough equipment to construct bisectors and triangles during the Constructions and Bartering Challenge. They also had to trade skills and make the best deal with the bank in order to make the most amount of money. They were able to reflect on how effective their strategies were and what the good and bad consequences were of being in competition with each other. This week they have been exploring similar shapes and scale factors, as well as applying tests in order to prove congruence.
This learning block we are learning how to use spreadsheets to analyse financial data from the perspective of a business owner. We are learning how to use different formula and functions to make this process much easier such using sorting and filtering. After we have arranged the data we then ask critical question about our data, this enables us to identify trends and then we can change our prices accordingly.
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